What a heap of trash
Is it compost or corruption?
Is it ecology or avarice?
The County of Hawaii Department of Environmental Management (DEM) is a welfare program for environmentalistic bureaucrats. Its first director was a woman with a degree in theatre arts. The big show, or shibi, continues to this day. The county has recently hired an anti-litter czar from the mainland. He will also be the Styrofoam cop and the compost king. The new director of DEM, also from the mainland, says that we need his pal to protect our aina. It makes me sick to hear newcomers use Hawaiian words like aina and then pick our pockets to protect it.
Although our county is in a lava-induced fiscal crunch, our DEM and its commissioners are determined to go full speed ahead and squander their budget on messages and slogans. Then they will impose more restrictions on us, charge us additional fees, and raise our taxes.
The environmentalists will soon find out that working class people resent being controlled. The money spent on browbeating citizens could be spent on fixing the closed off concrete pad at the Waiohinu Transfer Station. It could keep other transfer stations open. Then people would not be forced to use illegal dump sites. And we wouldn’t need an anti-litter czar.
It’s a vicious circle. We need dumps and sewers, but we don’t need lectures and scoldings. Also, we don’t need to pay friends-of-the-government to keep looking for new wastewater sites in Naalehu.
Our wastewater plants in Hilo and Kona need operators. I suggest that our new anti-litter czar should start out in that position. In a few years, he will learn the local style and earn our respect. Then he can tell us what is what.
Jerome Warren
Naalehu
Reverences seem equal
As I see it, the reverence for Pele by the Hawaiians can be compared with the reverence for Adam and Eve by Christians. It’s a way of explaining when no science exists to explain.
C. F. Steffen
Captain Cook
Justice will prevail, yeah?
Once upon a time there was a leader called Drumpf who ruled over a deeply divided country. He was cheered on by many self-proclaimed Christians despite the fact that he was also adored by the hateful KKK and the neo-Nazis who saluted him with “Heil, Drumpf!”
If that fact alone didn’t convince people of the dangers of Drumpf, what chance did they have of creating a free and admirable country?
Maybe we can do better than the poor country of Drumpf Land. After all, we believe in “truth, justice, and the American way,” right? Right?!
Charlie Webb
Kailua-Kona